Event 40204628

We just had another earthquake. The house jolted; the front door chain swung back and forth, tapping the doorframe; and I stood up, looking out the back window, realizing that if all hell breaks loose I’m really thirsty and I don’t have any bottled water. The jolting became a dull vibration, and then it ended. I sat back down on the futon.It was a 5.6 on the Richter scale, and the epicenter was 5.7 miles beneath the Earth’s surface. It was Event 40204628.

I actually got scared by this one, probably because it’s the largest (and longest, for sure) one I’ve felt in my new house, which isn’t really a house so much as a manufactured house. In a trailer park. Woo-hoo! In addition, it’s on river sediment. Liquefaction, anyone? At least it will Really Finally Actually make me affix my many many teapots (yeah, I know, I live in a trailer park and have a lot of teapots. But I only have ONE cat, so I’m not the Crazy Cat Lady. Yet.)with Museum Wax.

It was a fairly quick but steady earthquake: 10-15 seconds. The motion was a uniform shaking, not just a couple thumps. It hung around just long enough for me to wonder if it was going to explode into something bigger and then it was gone.

I was out with some friends at Black Angus and before it was over my friend and I had already made guesses at it’s richter rating. It looks like I won. 🙂

I’m glad everyone is alright out there.In reference to you Greater Los Angeles post…I just read this in Robert Stern’s “New York 1960”.

I don’t think New York is like other cities. It does not have character like Los Angeles or New Orleans. It is all characters—in fact, it is everything. It can destroy a man, but if his eyes are open it cannot bore him. New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition is murderous. But there is one thing about it—once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough –John Steinbeck, 1953